Sex & Drugs & Rock ‘n’ Roll by Chris Charlesworth
Not exactly “breaking news”, but I just very recently discovered that one of the shots of Toyah from the 1979 Simon Fowler photo shoot is included in this book. The cover boasts it contains “over 400 x-rated photos”. The photo of Toyah can hardly be classed as x-rated and, especially, by today’s standards is relatively conservative.
‘Sex & Drugs & Rock ‘n’ Roll’ by Chris Charlesworth was published by Omnibus Press in 1993 and again in July 2009. It includes photos of Madonna, Debbie Harry, Iggy Pop, Elvis and numerous others.
This is a bumper collection of photographs, mostly of rock and pop stars in situations where in hindsight, they would probably have preferred the cameramen to be elsewhere at the time. It is also a collection of shots in which sex has been used to sell the artist, or their records, or both, in the days before sexism was a political issue. Apart from the album sleeves themselves, these pictures have not been touched up or airbrushed. Neither were the negatives consigned to the darkroom bin or locked away in safety deposit boxes.
